By Suhaib Farooq Butt | Part 2 of a personal reflection series. This is a hypothetical interpretation, not a claim of scientific proof or a definitive explanation of Quranic verses.
Start here: Part 1: The Dimensional Passage Theory. This article develops one part of the theory further.
One physical wall, and a question about what lies beyond it
I have been thinking about the story of Yajuj and Majuj for a long time. I am not questioning what the Quran tells us about Dhul-Qarnayn. I am asking a different question: what if the iron-and-copper wall he built was an ordinary physical construction placed in front of an extraordinary opening? I want to explain the picture in my mind as clearly as I can. This is my hypothesis, not a claim that I have discovered the location of the barrier or that the Quran explicitly mentions dimensions.
In Surah Al-Kahf 18:93–98, Dhul-Qarnayn reaches a place between two mountain sides. People there describe Yajuj and Majuj as spreading corruption and ask for protection. Dhul-Qarnayn organizes the construction of a barrier made with iron and molten copper. They cannot climb over or penetrate it, and he says that when Allah's promise arrives the barrier will be brought down. Those are the details we have. The shape of the surrounding geography and the location of Yajuj and Majuj today are not identified in those verses.
Why would one passage matter so much?
Think of a mountain separating two normal regions. If there is a wall blocking one pass, people may eventually try another valley, another mountain, a route through the air, or a long detour. Perhaps the terrain really was so severe that only one route was accessible. We cannot rule that out. But what first struck my mind was another possibility: maybe the two mountains surrounded the only gateway between two different environments. Climbing the mountains would still leave a traveler in the same world. To reach the other world, someone would have to pass through the opening itself.
My theory is not that Dhul-Qarnayn created the gateway. I imagine that the passage had already existed for a long time, and Yajuj and Majuj had discovered it. They might have crossed into our world to attack nearby communities, take resources or simply cause destruction, and then returned. Dhul-Qarnayn did not need to conquer the entire place beyond the passage. Maybe the task assigned to him was only to close the entrance. Allah could have closed it by His will without human construction; perhaps there was wisdom in using a person and physical materials. But I cannot claim that Allah's reason was to leave evidence of a dimension. That is a thought I am considering.
Could an entrance look normal from one side?
Imagine a child inside a warm room and a cold world beyond the front door. The door itself looks ordinary, but beyond it the conditions change. Now imagine a more extraordinary version of that idea: one side of an opening looks like a cave or a gap between mountains, yet after crossing a threshold you reach somewhere completely different. It might be another planet, a distant region, or a separate reality with its own geography. I am not insisting which one it is. Even time might pass in the same way in both places; a different world does not automatically require a different clock.
Perhaps the opening can be approached from our side, but we do not know where it is. Maybe it is visible from one direction and not from another. Perhaps Yajuj and Majuj can see and touch the barrier from their side while we have lost track of its position. It could be a relatively small entrance leading to a region with an enormous population. To understand that hypothesis, we do not need a vast civilization hidden behind one of Earth's ordinary mountain ranges. We would need only one undiscovered connection.
Why was there no recorded attack during construction?
I also asked myself: if Yajuj and Majuj used this route in the past, why did they not interrupt the people building the wall? The Quran does not describe an attack during construction, but that silence is not proof that they never tried. I can imagine occasional visits rather than continuous travel. Maybe their own civilization had enough food, water and resources at that time, so they were not permanently watching the entrance. Or perhaps, from their side, the dimensional opening prevented them from seeing the construction taking place immediately beyond it. The wall might have been discovered only when someone next attempted to cross.
Why modern satellites do not settle the question
There are still mountain caves, high-altitude regions and underground areas that have not been directly inspected in every detail. Satellite photographs tell us a great deal, but they do not reveal the inside of every cave or explain every physical object. Yet the absence of an identified enormous Yajuj and Majuj civilization on the accessible surface of Earth is not proof that there is a dimensional gateway. An unknown location and an unknown physical mechanism are two separate unanswered questions.
The resemblance I sometimes see is with hypothetical wormholes in mathematical physics: distant places can be represented as linked by a shortcut. NASA notes that wormholes appear in some mathematical solutions, but no traversable wormhole has been observed. Real black holes, on the other hand, are not established portals to other dimensions. I use these comparisons to describe my imagination, not to present physics as proof of the Quranic wall.
What the release might look like
I picture one gateway and one sealed entrance. When Allah's appointed time arrives, the barrier falls, and enormous numbers can pass through that single opening and then spread in different directions. Surah Al-Anbiya 21:96 speaks of Yajuj and Majuj being released and surging from every elevation. That language does not itself say they emerge from a dimensional entrance high in the mountains, but it is one of the images that led me to think about a single starting point followed by wide dispersal.
Could there be other gateways leading to other worlds? Maybe. That is secondary to my argument, and I do not know. My specific proposal is that Dhul-Qarnayn sealed one pre-existing passage. The Quran tells us the barrier was built and will fall at Allah's appointed time. Everything I have suggested about a dimensional connection, its visibility and its location remains my interpretation, not an established fact.
References and further reading
- Surah Al-Kahf 18:93–98
- Surah Al-Anbiya 21:96
- NASA: Wormholes and their scientific status
- NASA: What black holes are not
Read the series: Part 3 · Part 4
Allah knows best.
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